Experiments In Architecture

In this ground-breaking book, the first to provide an overview of the theory and practice of experimental architecture, Rachel Armstrong explores how interdisciplinary, design-led research practices are beginning to redefine the possibilities of architecture as a profession. Drawing on experts from disciplines as varied as information technology, mathematics, poetry, graphic design, scenography, bacteriology, marine applied science and robotics, Professor Armstrong delineates original, cutting-edge architectural experiments through essays, quotes, poetry, equations and stories. Written by an acknowledged pioneer of architectural experiment, this visionary book is ideal for students and researchers wishing to engage in experimental, practice-based architectural and artistic research. It introduces radical new ideas about architecture and provides ideas and inspiration which students and researchers can apply in their own work and proposals, while practitioners can draw on it to transform their creative assumptions and develop thereby a distinctive "edge" to stand out in a highly competitive profession.

Told by architects, artists, engineers, makers, clients, developers and educationalists whose projects are exemplary in their field, these stories describe how sharing expertise outside conventional disciplinary boundaries can lead to better work and extraordinary discoveries.

This book presents a series of pedagogical experiments translating climate science, environmental humanities, material research, ecological practices into the architectural curriculum. Balancing the science and humanities, it exposes recent pedagogical experiments from renown educators, while also interrogating a designer’s agency between science and speculation in the face of climate uncertainty. The teaching experiments are presented across four sections: Abstraction, Organization, Building, and Narrative, exposing core parts of an architect’s education and how educators can simultaneously provide fundamental skills and constructive literacy while instigating environmental sensibilities. Chapters cover issues such as an unstable hydrosphere, water infrastructure, remediating materials, methods of disassembly and adaptive reuse, as well as constructing new aesthetic categories of climate change, and implementing oral histories of construction, among many others. Written and edited by expert design educators actively engaged in experimenting in new forms of pedagogy, this book will be of great use to architecture instructors at all levels looking to renew their teaching practices to more directly address the climate emergency. It will also appeal to those academics across the built environment interested in the ways design can affect and adapt to climate change.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the use of bamboo in the building industry. It systematically demonstrates bamboo’s utility in terms of its properties, describing the material properties of typical industrial bamboo products, and discussing their performance evaluation and optimization as building components and in the creation of building envelopes. The book presents the recent developments regarding the innovative ways to design and represent architecture through parametric survey tools, and describes the experimental geometrical-generative design process of a connection joint for free-form lightweight structures employing beams made of bamboo culms. It examines algorithmic-generative design themes, through processes of optimization, analysis, and geometrical-spatial verification, employing the potential of digital form-finding design and digital manufacturing techniques to validate the defined technological solution. This book appeals to scientists and professionals and is a valuable resource for civil engineers, designers and students interested in this unique plant material and its application in the building industry. Videos via app: download the SN More Media app for free, scan an image or a link with play button and access the videos directly on your smartphone or tablet.

A handbook for navigating our troubled and precarious times intended to help readers imagine and make their world anew. In search of new knowledge practices that can help us make the world livable again, this book takes the reader on a journey across time—from the deep past to the unfolding future. The authors search beyond human knowledge to establish negotiated partnerships with forms of knowledge within the planet itself, examining how we have manipulated these historically through an anthropocentric focus. The book explores the many different kinds of knowledge, and the diversity of instruments needed to invoke and actuate the potency of human and nonhuman agencies. Four key phases in our ways of knowing are identified: material, strengthening, reconfiguring and extending, which are exemplified through case studies that take the form of worlding experiments. This pioneering work will inspire architects, artists and designers as well as students, teachers and researchers across arts and design disciplines.

This collection discusses the innovative and experimental architecture of Israel during its first three decades following the nation's establishment in 1948. The volume highlights new perspectives on the topic, discussing the inception, modernisation and habitation of historic and lesser-researched areas alike in its interrogation.

Since the mid-1990s, the world of architecture has seen new talent emerge from unlikely arenas. With essays by leading contemporary critics, this book presents detailed profiles and illustrations of the most recent projects from 60 of the most forward-thinking architects from around the world.